I listened to the audiobook through Libby. Ruby Dee is amazing at performing and narrating the story. She makes every other skillful audiobook narrator I've heard seem like they are only giving a 70% effort. The various character voices and emotive delivery are stellar. Hurston's story feels like a legend about the founding of the black town of Eatonville, Florida, where she grew up, and where she did anthropological studies in college. We follow the life of Janie. As a child she is raised by her grandmother and married off young to a much older man. She is raised to be obedient and stays put for years. Later, she runs off with a smooth talker who has dreams of being the mayor of a new black town. As the mayor's wife she is treated with respect, but is caught in a sort of gilded cage. As a still young widow, Janie meets perhaps her great love, and starts life anew again. She begins to enjoy life and find her individuality for the first time. The ending crashes through fairly rapidly with a hurricane hitting Florida, a rabid dog bite, and a brief courtroom drama. Hurston really masters the language in a poetic way with the dialect of blacks in the south in the 1930s.
